


oh how you love my pain away

by honey_butter



Series: chronic pain peter [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Other, Peter Nureyev Has Chronic Pain, content warning for brief mention of past domestic abuse and substance abuse from peter, i like to think it isnt too angsty, juno makes these things more bearable, oh also content warning for descriptions of chronic pain, peter nureyev has chronic illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22470844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_butter/pseuds/honey_butter
Summary: Peter cracked his eyes open against the cold, false light that was slowly filling his room. His eyes were gummy, his eyelashes caked together by a thin film of goop, and it was as he moved his arm to rub at them that he realized…oh,it was going to be one of these days.In which Peter has chronic pain and gets chronically ill and Juno loves him so much.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: chronic pain peter [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714003
Comments: 20
Kudos: 191





	oh how you love my pain away

**Author's Note:**

> hi so i wrote all of this while in a whole heck of a lot of pain because (surprise surprise) it's just one of those days. i decided to switch it up a bit and have peter instead of juno be the one i project onto so i wrote this. the beginning is a whole lot of petey boy angst but the end gets sappy so trust me!! there is comfort in this!! it's not all hurt i couldn't do that to my boy.
> 
> again, content warnings for (very, very brief) mentions of past domestic abuse and substance abuse as well as descriptions of chronic pain.
> 
> enjoy!!

Peter cracked his eyes open against the cold, false light that was slowly filling his room. His eyes were gummy, his eyelashes caked together by a thin film of goop, and it was as he moved his arm to rub at them that he realized…  _ oh, _ it was going to be one of these days. 

The joints in his fingers, his wrists, his elbows, ached like an old wound. As he woke up more, his brain began to register the pain in his legs as well. His knees always hurt the worst, like someone had placed them in a vice while he slept and only just released them. A cough racked his body, pushing him from the bed in an upward arch, causing the pain in his limbs to spike and reach a fever pitch. He contemplated fumbling for his comms, calling Juno, calling Buddy, but it wouldn’t matter anyway, they couldn’t do anything for him.

_ Just fall back asleep, _ Peter willed, remaining prone and flat on the bed. He’d just woken up but already he was  _ so _ tired and why couldn’t this day just be over and stars he  _ hurt _ .

Peter had been living with this for a while ( _ twenty-five years) _ but that didn’t make it any easier, any less painful. The doctor on Venus had said something about repetitive motion, stress, a genetic predisposition, and did he know of any family who may have had similar chronic health issues, and Peter had stormed from the office with the help of a cane. When he’d been living there, on Venus, the pain never left. Castor had found him multiple mornings whimpering in bed, he’d rubbed his back gently and fed him drugs that made it all go away. 

Peter had flushed all those drugs when he joined the  _ Carte Blanche _ . Buddy had watched him do it, standing over the toilet with a hand on her hip and her eyebrows lowered in stern approval. He hadn’t missed the way he couldn’t remember what happened to his body after he came down, hadn’t missed the feeling of guilt at the unfamiliar bruises that littered his skin, but he did miss how it made the pain leave. Right now… right now he’d give just about anything to make it all disappear.

He lay there for who knows how long, his body hurting, his mind circling, his nose running and throat aching from all of the coughing.  _ How did I get sick again? What did I do? It’s my fault… it has to be. _ He kept remembering the feeling of Castor’s hands on him even when he cried out in pain, kept remembering the sting of a needle in his arm, the cool air that had gusted over his dozing form as Juno left him in that hotel on Hyperion… 

“Hey, Nureyev, Buddy sent me to check on you.” Juno’s warm, happy voice drifted in from the hallway. Peter could see the silhouette of his feet against the light in the crack under the door.

Peter said nothing, willing him to go away. Today was a pain day, the pain of his flesh and the pain of his memories, this new, smiling Juno had no place in it.

Juno knocked now, two heavy taps against the metal that echoed and sent shivers down Peter’s spine, “Nureyev? Are you okay?”

Peter opened his mouth to tell him to go away but a cough came out instead, shaking him to the core and causing all of his muscles to seize up.

“Dammit, Nureyev?” A breath, Peter kept coughing, “Okay, I’m coming in.”

“No,” but it was too weak and the door was already sliding open and Peter had to shut his eyes from the light that filtered in behind the ex-detective, but they didn’t stay shut for long, Peter could never stop himself when it came to looking at Juno Steel.

Juno looked gorgeous as usual; a too big, fuzzy sweater sliding off of one of his shoulders accompanied by a short, pleated skirt and fishnet stockings with Martian bunny slippers to ward against the chill that radiated from the metal flooring. Peter shuddered to think what he looked like, in his old pyjamas and zero make up.

Juno stepped into the room cautiously, “What’s wrong?”

_I’m sick again, I can’t get up because everything hurts too much,_ _I keep seeing you leaving me and him hurting me,_ all of these and more flitted through Peter’s head. He merely stared at Juno in silence.

“I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.” Juno moved to smooth the hair back from his forehead but flinched away at first contact, “Christ, Nureyev, you’re burning up. Let me get Vespa.”

“No, don’t.” His voice was dry and rasping and so much deeper than it usually was. 

“You’re sick.” Peter watched as the gears turned behind Juno’s  _ (impossibly warm, brown, welcoming) _ eye. “Weren’t you sick two weeks ago? And… and the week before that?”

Peter didn’t say anything, his fingers began to ache anew from how he was clenching them in the bedspread to stop himself from reaching for Juno’s hand.

Juno stared at him for another moment before pressing his hand to Peter’s cheek, gently running his hand over the tear tracks Peter hadn’t even realized were there, “I’m going to get medicine. I won’t bring Vespa. Just… think about talking to me when I get back?”

And then it was dark again and quiet and Peter’s whole body ached and his head felt like it might split itself open. But then Juno was back, helping Peter sit up even as he fought down a cry of pain, placing fever and pain pills in his hand, in his mouth when he made no movement to put them there himself.

“Thank you.” Juno is sitting on the edge of the bed now, gently smoothing Peter’s eyebrows with his thumb.

“Of course, do you feel any better?”

“A little.”

Juno stared out the window, at the sparkling gems of space that floated by, “Is this why you want the curemother so badly?”

“How…” Peter had to take a breath to unstick his tongue from the bottom of his mouth, “How could you tell?”

“You’re sick all the time, you’re obviously in pain even more than that… What? You aren’t quite as subtle as you think.”

“And you aren’t as unobservant as I’ve been giving you credit for.”

Juno huffed out a laugh before turning his full attention back to Peter, saying in a softer voice, “Tell me how I can help.”

“I don’t know.” And it sounded broken, desperate. 

Peter  _ didn’t  _ know. He’d never had anyone willing to help before, the pain started after Mag, when Peter was alone, and now he made sure to avoid work on days that were usually bad  _ (before a storm, in the cold, anything too close to another heist when the stress was still coursing through his body) _ so he hadn’t been around many people. And he’d learned to take copious, unadvisable amounts of cold medicine when the sickness found him.

“Oh, baby,” Juno murmured, lightly caressing Peter’s face, Peter’s neck, with his hand.

Peter let his eyes slip shut, the medicine making him sleepy, not quite silencing the pain but easing it slightly. “You being here is enough.”

“I wouldn’t leave you like this.”

The bite of,  _ “You have before,” _ sits unsaid on his tongue. He doesn’t want to ruin this moment, rich with the feeling of Juno’s calloused palms soothing him to sleep and, ultimately, blessed release from the pain.

“I think, not right now and only if you want to, but, I think you should talk to Vespa. I’ll go with you, if you want, but she could really help you, Nureyev.”

Peter didn’t want to have to explain this to yet another person, to have them laugh it away or ask too many questions that he didn’t know the answers to. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Mmm,” Peter hummed as Juno ran his fingers lightly over the shell of Peter’s ear, his eyes slipping shut like a cat.

Juno continued to rub the skin there, threading his fingers through Peter’s  _ (now probably greasy, ragged, disgusting) _ hair. Peter found himself leaning into the touch. The medicine had begun to bring his fever down and his coughing had stopped for the most part. The standard pain meds did little to help his aches but Juno was distracting him with all the touching and they seemed to quiet down to a dull roar, white noise underlying the whole Juno-ness of it all.

“You’re too good to me, darling,” Peter murmured, Juno running a single hand soothingly down his arm.

“Nureyev…” Juno trailed off, hands still moving even as his words stilled. Peter cracked his eyes open and nearly began coughing again as he sucked in a breath from the sight of Juno leaning over him, the most tender look of love and caring in his eye, backlit by the hall’s light like one of the angels ancient humans used to believe in. “You deserve so much more than I could ever give you and I’m trying I just… you deserve the stars.”

Peter squeezed his eyes shut, burning this picture into his head as he tried to hold back tears.

“And I wish, I wish I could make the pain go away with my hands,” as he said this Juno smoothed both of his hands slowly down Peter’s front, reverently, like he was touching something holy. “And you shouldn’t be hurting like this and you shouldn’t be sick like this and  _ God _ , Nureyev, I want to make it that way.”

“You are,” it’s a rasp, not his usual beautiful lilt, but it will have to do. “You make everything more beautiful, Juno.”

“I love you, Nureyev.” And now Peter could tell that Juno was crying as well and Peter’s cheeks felt hot from the  _ (quieter but still there) _ fever and from this love that was pouring out of his lady.

“I love you, Juno.”

It was quiet for a while, the whir of the lights, the quiet, occasional clanking of the ship, and Peter’s heavy breath being the only things to break the silence. Peter felt himself drifting off, Juno’s hands lulling him to sleep and calming his thoughts.

Juno felt like the sun on his skin, like the warmth of a summer’s breeze, like the feeling of hot bread in his stomach. Juno felt like an old home, a new home,  _ his _ home. And even though he was sick again, even though he  _ hurt _ and he  _ ached _ and he knew he would do so until the day his body lay deep in the soil, Peter was happy.

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks so much for reading!! the ending is not uhhh proofread so shwoopsie if there are any mistakes, and if you liked it don't be shy to leave a comment, i love getting them.
> 
> my tumblr is [labelleofbelfastcity](https://labelleofbelfastcity.tumblr.com/) if you want to check it out.
> 
> i'm gonna stop talking now cause my hands (and my legs and my arms and my feet and you get the point) hurt the entire time i was typing this so see y'all later, hope you have a fantastic morning/afternoon/night!!


End file.
